So, off-and-on I’ve been a “member” or “participant” in various social movement organisations. I take a Marxist approach, mostly. That is, Groucho Marx, especially the bit where he said “I don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me as a member.”
Below is a glossary (inevitably) of terms and a couple of books that you might find useful, but first, a video I did (with the help of a good friend) in 2010 about how little traction climate activists get, and why that isn’t surprising.
Three very cool books
Blee, K. 2012.Democracy in the Making: How Activist Groups Form. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Louis, D. 1972/1997 And we are not saved: a history of the movement as people. The Press at Water’s Edge
Staggenborg, S. 2015. Social Movements. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fiction: Vida, Local Deities, Mud, Death is Part of the Process, etc – see review here.
My fiction – “The Defiant Ones” – an academic and an activist chained together, on the run…
Other glossary terms here (some/all will be integrated).
Glossary
Abeyance [Video about Abeyance]
Absorptive Capacity [Video about Absorptive Capacity]
Avuncularitis [Video about Avuncularitis]
Biographical Availability [Video about Biographical Availability]
Capabilities, operational [Video about operational capabilities]
Collective Competence [Video about Collective Competence]
Corporate Opportunity Structures
Decruitment [Video about Decruitment]
Emotions (in Social Movements)
Facipulation [ Video about Facipulation]
Initiator Movements [Video about Initiator Movements]
Law of Two Feet [Video about the Law of Two Feet]
Legitimate Peripheral Participation
Movements, initiator [Video about initiator movements]
Movements, spin-off [Video about spin-off movements]
Movement Action Plan [Video about MAP – sort of. More about its abuseses]
Operational Capabilities [Video about operational capabilities]
Post-ecological thinking [Video about post-ecological thinking]
Sensitise the elite decision-makers
Single Point of Failure [Single Point of Failure]
“Study the Rich” [Video about ‘Study the Rich’]
Tyranny of Stucturelessness [Video about Tyranny of Structurelessness]
marchudson.net 